Managing data block compression in a storage system

ABSTRACT

An aspect of managing data block compression in a storage system includes performing, for each block written to the storage system: bit-wise traversing the block, searching the block for a pattern indicating a repeating sequence of bits and, upon determining the pattern exists in the block and the repeating sequence of bits in the pattern exceeds a threshold value, removing the repeating sequence of bits from the block thereby yielding a reduced-size block.

BACKGROUND

Data optimization techniques reduce system administration and storageoverhead costs. One optimization technique is compression in which asystem re-encodes data in a form that uses fewer bits than the originaldata, which can increase storage, transmission speed, and processingefficiency. While data compression techniques save on storage space, itcan involve overhead costs such as increases in input/output (IO) accessoverhead. In addition, there are many storage operations that operate oningested blocks, such as hash calculations and compression/decompressionthat may benefit, in CPU cycles and or memory and/or interface bandwidthoverhead, from block size reduction.

SUMMARY

This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in asimplified form that are further described below in the DetailedDescription. This Summary is not intended to identify key features oressential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended tobe used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.

According to aspects of the disclosure, a method for managing data blockcompression in a storage system is provided. The method includesperforming, for each block written to the system: bit-wise traversingthe block, searching the block for a pattern indicating a repeatingsequence of bits and, upon determining the pattern exists in the blockand the repeating sequence of bits in the pattern exceeds a thresholdvalue, removing the repeating sequence of bits from the block therebyyielding a reduced-sized block. According to aspects of the disclosure,a system for managing data block compression is provided. The systemincludes a memory comprising computer-executable instructions and aprocessor executing the computer-executable instructions, thecomputer-executable instructions when executed by the processor causethe processor to perform operations. The operations include performing,for each block written to the storage system: bit-wise traversing theblock, searching the block for a pattern indicating a repeating sequenceof bits and, upon determining the pattern exists in the block and therepeating sequence of bits in the pattern exceeds a threshold value,removing the repeating sequence of bits from the block thereby yieldinga reduced-sized block.

According to aspects of the disclosure, a computer program product formanaging data block compression is provided. The computer programproduct is embodied on a non-transitory computer readable medium, thecomputer program product including instructions that, when executed by acomputer, causes the computer to perform operations. The operationsinclude performing, for each block written to the storage system:bit-wise traversing the block, searching the block for a patternindicating a repeating sequence of bits and, upon determining thepattern exists in the block and the repeating sequence of bits in thepattern exceeds a threshold value, removing the repeating sequence ofbits from the block thereby yielding a reduced-sized block.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Other aspects, features, and advantages of the claimed invention willbecome more fully apparent from the following detailed description, theappended claims, and the accompanying drawings in which like referencenumerals identify similar or identical elements. Reference numerals thatare introduced in the specification in association with a drawing figuremay be repeated in one or more subsequent figures without additionaldescription in the specification in order to provide context for otherfeatures.

FIG. 1 is a diagram of an example of a storage system according toembodiments;

FIG. 2 is a diagram depicting an example metadata data structure;

FIG. 3 is a flowchart of a process according to embodiments;

FIG. 4 is a diagram depicting an example block storage structureaccording to embodiments; and

FIG. 5 is a diagram of an example of a computing device according toembodiments.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Before describing embodiments of the concepts, structures, andtechniques sought to be protected herein, some terms are explained. Thefollowing description includes a number of terms for which thedefinitions are generally known in the art. However, the followingglossary definitions are provided to clarify the subsequent descriptionand may be helpful in understanding the specification and claims.

As used herein, the term “storage system” is intended to be broadlyconstrued so as to encompass, for example, private or public cloudcomputing systems for storing data as well as systems for storing datacomprising virtual infrastructure and those not comprising virtualinfrastructure. As used herein, the terms “client,” “host,” and “user”refer, interchangeably, to any person, system, or other entity that usesa storage system to read/write data, as well as issue requests forconfiguration of storage units in the storage system. In someembodiments, the term “storage device” may also refer to a storage arrayincluding multiple storage devices. In certain embodiments, a storagemedium may refer to one or more storage mediums such as a hard drive, acombination of hard drives, flash storage, combinations of flashstorage, combinations of hard drives, flash, and other storage devices,and other types and combinations of computer readable storage mediumsincluding those yet to be conceived. A storage medium may also referboth physical and logical storage mediums and may include multiple levelof virtual to physical mappings and may be or include an image or diskimage. A storage medium may be computer-readable, and may also bereferred to herein as a computer-readable program medium. Also, astorage unit may refer to any unit of storage including those describedabove with respect to the storage devices, as well as including storagevolumes, logical drives, containers, or any unit of storage exposed to aclient or application. A storage volume may be a logical unit of storagethat is independently identifiable and addressable by a storage system.

In certain embodiments, the term “IO request” or simply “IO” may be usedto refer to an input or output request, such as a data read or datawrite request or a request to configure and/or update a storage unitfeature. A feature may refer to any service configurable for the storagesystem.

In certain embodiments, a storage device may refer to any non-volatilememory (NVM) device, including hard disk drives (HDDs), solid statedrivers (SSDs), flash devices (e.g., NAND flash devices), and similardevices that may be accessed locally and/or remotely (e.g., via astorage attached network (SAN)(also referred to herein as storage arraynetwork (SAN)).

In certain embodiments, a storage array (sometimes referred to as a diskarray) may refer to a data storage system that is used for block-based,file-based or object storage, where storage arrays can include, forexample, dedicated storage hardware that contains spinning hard diskdrives (HDDs), solid-state disk drives, and/or all-flash drives. Flash,as is understood, is a solid-state (SS) random access media type thatcan read any address range with no latency penalty, in comparison to ahard disk drive (HDD) which has physical moving components which requirerelocation when reading from different address ranges and thussignificantly increasing the latency for random IO data.

In certain embodiments, a data storage entity and/or storage unit may beany one or more of a file system, object storage, a virtualized device,a logical unit, a logical unit number, a logical volume, a logicaldevice, a physical device, and/or a storage medium.

In certain embodiments, a logical unit (LU) may be a logical entityprovided by a storage system for accessing data from the storage system,and as used herein a logical unit is used interchangeably with a logicalvolume. In many embodiments herein, a LU or LUN (logical unit number)may be used interchangeable for each other. In certain embodiments, aLUN may be a logical unit number for identifying a logical unit; mayalso refer to one or more virtual disks or virtual LUNs, which maycorrespond to one or more Virtual Machines. In certain embodiments, avolume refers to a unit of storage on a disk.

In certain embodiments, a storage cluster may refer to a type ofconfiguration that enables stretched clusters (e.g., clustersdistributed across different geographic locations). Storage clusterconfigurations enable entities to provide load balancing and migrationsbetween data centers.

In certain embodiments, Log Structured Storage (LSS) refers to a filesystem in which data and metadata are written sequentially to a circularbuffer, called a log. Log-structured file systems reclaim free spacefrom the tail of the log to prevent the file system from becoming fullwhen the head of the log wraps around to meet it. The tail can releasespace and move forward by skipping over data for which newer versionsexist farther ahead in the log. If there are no newer versions, then thedata is moved and appended to the head.

In certain embodiments, a block refers to a sequence of bytes or bits,having a maximum length (block size). The block size can be fixed orvariable. A block device, or block storage device may refer to a levelof abstraction for hardware that is responsible for storing andretrieving specified blocks of data. In certain embodiments, a filesystem may be based on a block device, which may be a level ofabstraction for the hardware responsible for storing and retrievingspecified blocks of data. Block storage may be abstracted by a filesystem or database management system (DBMS) for use by applications andend users. Physical or logical volumes accessed via block IO may bedevices internal to a server, directly attached via SCSI or FibreChannel, or remote devices accessed via storage area network (SAN) usingprotocols such as iSCSI.

While vendor-specific terminology may be used herein to facilitateunderstanding, it is understood that the concepts, techniques, andstructures sought to be protected herein are not limited to use with anyspecific commercial products. In addition, to ensure clarity in thedisclosure, well-understood methods, procedures, circuits, components,and products are not described in detail herein.

The phrases, “such as,” “for example,” “e.g.,” “exemplary,” and variantsthereof, are used herein to describe non-limiting embodiments and areused herein to mean “serving as an example, instance, or illustration.”Any embodiments herein described via these phrases and/or variants arenot necessarily to be construed as preferred or advantageous over otherembodiments and/or to exclude the incorporation of features from otherembodiments. In addition, the word “optionally” is used herein to meanthat a feature or process, etc., is provided in some embodiments and notprovided in other embodiments.” Any particular embodiment of theinvention may include a plurality of “optional” features unless suchfeatures conflict.

Modern log structure storage systems (LSS) usually support deduplicationmethods to reduce physical storage capacity to enable more logicalcapacity for the same given physical space. Deduplication or and partialpattern removal can be performed for full page (e.g., 4K) deduplication.However, in many cases, sub-sector deduplication is not performed due toseveral reasons. For example, a sub-sector (which is less than 512 MB)is a very small piece of data which means that looking for such matchingfragments, may require more resources in terms of metadatarepresentation and CPU cycles than the (if at all) any benefit of suchreduction. Also, compression, which is very common in storage systems,reduces further the need for sub-sector dedupe as differences between acompressed sector and a compressed partial sector may be even smaller.As such, only a technique that could enable sub-sector reduction thatwould consume small to little representing metadata and CPU cycles wouldbe desirable.

Pattern matching may be used to reduce capacity (e.g., all-zero pagereduction in which pages having all zeros are represented by metadataonly.

A block may be compressed by removing unnecessary trailing zeros from ablock. If zeros are removed from the original data, this informationneeds to be managed so that the original number can be rebuilt in thedecompression phase without data loss. Bookkeeping for such informationcan be costly and may result in poor compression performance. Theembodiments described herein provide a technique for partial blockpattern matching and reduction that reduce total capacity andpotentially reduce CPU and bus access overhead. The technique usespartial block pattern matching to remove parts of a block beforeingestion operations (such as compression and hash calculation) areperformed.

Turning now to FIG. 1, a system 100 for managing data block compressionin a storage system environment will now be described in accordance withembodiments. The storage system 100 of FIG. 1 includes processingcircuitry 102, memory 104, and persistent storage 106. In an embodiment,the persistent storage 106 may be locally installed within the storagesystem 100, as shown in FIG. 1, or may be an external or remote devicethat is communicatively coupled to the storage system 100 via aconnection (not shown).

If the persistent storage 106 is remote, it may be coupled to thestorage system via known connections, interfaces and network circuitry,e.g., Ethernet cables, Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) wireless connections,an IP network, SCSI cables, SATA cables, Fibre Channel (FC) cables, etc.If the connection is a network connection, then interfaces and networkcircuitry may include, for example, one or more Ethernet cards, cellularmodems, FC adapters, Wi-Fi wireless networking adapters, and/or otherdevices for connecting to a network. If the connection to the persistentstorage is a local storage connection, then interface and/or networkinterface circuitry may include for example, SCSI, SAS, ATA, SATA, FC,and/or other similar controllers and ports.

The persistent storage 106 may include any kind of persistent storagedevices, such as, for example, hard disk drives, solid-state storagedevices, flash drives, etc. Persistent storage 106 stores user data asvolumes 122A-122 n, which represents one or more logical disksaccessible by users. Volumes 122A-122 n are organized and managed withreference to metadata that is stored within various data structures,such as metadata structure 108 in memory 104. As shown in FIG. 1, by wayof non-limiting example, the persistent storage is implemented via astorage array 120. While the unit of data storage is described herein asvolumes in a storage array, it is understood that other units of datastorage or object storage may be employed to realize the advantages ofthe embodiments.

The memory 104 may be any kind of digital system memory, such as, forexample, random access memory (RAM). Memory 104 stores an operatingsystem (OS, not depicted) in operation (e.g., a Linux, UNIX, Windows,MacOS, or similar operating system). Memory 104 may also stores aninput/output (I/O) stack 120 in operation (not shown). The I/O stackallows I/O requests (not depicted) from external hosts (as well as localapplications) to be processed with respect to the volume data 122A-122 nmanaged by the storage system 100.

The memory 104 also stores an index 110 for tracking metadatacorresponding to blocks subject to compression, which is describedfurther herein.

The storage system includes processing circuitry 102, which may be anykind of processor or set of processors configured to perform operations,such as, for example, a microprocessor, a multi-core microprocessor, adigital signal processor, a system on a chip, a collection of electroniccircuits, a similar kind of controller, or any combination of the above.It will be understood that the storage system 100 may also include othercomponents as are well-known in the art, including interconnectioncircuitry. In operation, the processing circuitry 102 may execute one ormore application, which may be implemented in logic executable by theprocessing circuitry.

The processing circuitry 102 is configured to receive and serviceinput/output (IO) requests from one or more external or remote systems(not shown) that are communicatively coupled to the storage system 100.The coupling may be implemented via any type of communication network,such as Internet, local area network, wide area network, and may includewireline and/or wireless technology.

The volumes 122A-122 n may be addressable via a logical address that ismapped to a physical address of the array through a three level ofindirection scheme that is used to perform address translation duringread and write operations with respect to the array.

In deduplication processes, levels of indirection with respect tostorage addressing may be used to translate or map between layers ofstorage space: (i) first-level mappings (leaves) that contain pointersto data, (ii) second-level mappings that contain pointers to thefirst-level mappings, and (iii) third-level mappings contain pointers tothe second-level mappings. The first level can be logical block addressspace (LBA) (e.g., LBA 112), the second level can be virtual blockaddress space (VLB) (e.g., VLB 114), and the third level can be physicaladdress space (PLB) (e.g., PLB 116). Each of these address spacesreflect a range of addresses. The mapping can be implemented using adata structure that takes a logical address and uses a pointer to pointto a VLB address, which in turn points to a physical address (PLB) inwhich certain data (e.g., such as a page) resides.

Deduplication may be implemented using a unique hash representing ablock. The system may include a deduplication index that represents mosthashes (which in turn represent most unique capacity of the cluster ofvolumes. A partial block match occurs when a subpage (e.g., few sectorsof the page) match between two pages (e.g., part of the page are uniqueand part of the pages are in common).

A logical representation of metadata in a data structure 200 for twopartial matching blocks (P1 and P2, 210 and 220, respectively) in acluster is shown in FIG. 2. The data structure 200 corresponds to thedata structure 108 of FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 2, the two partialmatching blocks (e.g., pages) are maintained separately of one another(i.e., no common part of the pages are maintained by the system). Thecommon part of the pages (i.e., that which represents duplicate data) isshown as 212 and 222. The page P1 also contains data 214 which is not incommon with P2. Likewise, the page P2 contains data 224 that is not incommon with page P. Thus, the data stored in part of the page P1 (214)is not a duplicate of the part of the data stored in P2 (224). In themetadata structure 200 of FIG. 2, for page P1 (210), a logical address#1 for the page points to a VLB entry #1, which in turns points to thepage P1. Also in the metadata structure 200 of FIG. 2, for page P2(220), a logical address #2 for the page points to a VLB entry #2, whichin turn points to the page P2.

In a block based storage system, each block is handled, e.g., when ahash representing the block is calculated, ingesting block compressionfor reducing the effective persisted block size, entropy calculations,and block decompression for retrieving a persistent block upon userrequest (e.g., a read operation). These, and other operations requireaccess to the whole block reducing the effective block size (byelimination of patterns (e.g., trailing zeros), which may reduce CPUoverhead and/or memory access overhead.

The embodiments described herein provide partial page pattern matchingand reduction which results in partial page (or block) deduplicationwhere the logical unique portion of the block is reduced. A blockstorage device exposes a fixed block size to an upper application (e.g.,filesystem). As such, file sizes are multiples of this block size. Thisresults with zero padding where zeros exactly fit within a full block.

In many cases trailing zeros are overlooked by storage as it's assumedthat compression will eliminate (without penalty) these trailing zeros.But in some cases (e.g., software tree which composed of many smallfiles) this is not the case and removing these trailing zero priorcompression provides benefit. The embodiments described herein usespartial block pattern match to remove parts of the block prior furtherprocessing (e.g., compression). The partial block pattern matchingoperates to reduce (fixed) block size by marking part of the block aszeros. In terms of capacity, compressing partial blocks results in lesscompressed data compared with the same partial block that is padded withzeros. With respect to hardware compression bandwidth, compressing apartial block reduces the bandwidth required to the hardware compressionblock and as a result a) reduces bus contention and b) reduces potentialadditional compression when there is a bottleneck to the hardware. Inaddition, per page (or file) processing is reduced due the shortereffective page size. As an example, calculating page SHA-1 which maypose a high CPU load is reduced by half for a 4K page where 2 KB of itare trailing zeros.

Turning now to FIGS. 3 and 4, a process 300 and a sample fixed-sizeblock 400 upon which the process 300 may be performed will now bedescribed in accordance with embodiments. Blocks 302-318 are performedfor each block to be written to storage.

In block 302, the process 300 receives a block to be written to storage.In embodiments, the block is a fixed-size block as shown, e.g., in FIG.4. In block 304, the process 300 traverses (in a bitwise fashion) theblock beginning at the end of the block (e.g., in which the newest datahas been entered). During this traversal, the process 300 looks for anypatterns in the data referred to as a repeating sequence of bits. Thepattern can be a repeating data value, such as trailing zeros at the endof the block or may be any repeating sequence of data in any mid-portionof the block. A non-zero repeating sequence may include, e.g., a patternof repeating 1, 2, 3, 4 . . . or 2, 2, 2, 2 . . . , to name a few. Bybeginning the traversal at the end of the block as described above, theidentification of a non-zero pattern is detected early (e.g., paddedzeros added at the end of the block).

In block 306, the process 300 determines if there is a detected patternand if so, if the pattern exceeds a threshold value (e.g., a minimumnumber of repeating bits or trailing zeros). FIG. 4 illustrates anexample pattern 402 in the block 400 that has been identified by anumber of bits in a repeating sequence. The threshold value may beselected as a function of the size of the pattern of bits in relation tothe size of the block. By way of non-limiting example, a threshold maybe set as a pattern of bits that exceeds 10% of the size of the block.

If there is no pattern, or alternatively, if the pattern does not exceedthe threshold value, a compression operation is performed on the blockin block 318.

If, however, there is a pattern detected that exceeds the thresholdvalue in block 306, the process 300 removes the bits corresponding tothe pattern (i.e., the repeating sequence of bits) from the block,thereby yielding a reduced size block in block 308. Using the aboveexample, the reduced block size is approximately 10% smaller than theoriginal block size. It is understood that the removal of a repeatingsequence can be within the block (i.e., not limited to a trailingsequence).

The removal of the portion of the block subject to the pattern, e.g.,removal of trailing zeros, can be performed in chunks of 64 bytes. Assuch, marking a number, e.g., 2K, of the pattern is efficient since onlya few bits are needed to represent a repeating sequence. This can sum toa few bits to represent, e.g., 3.5K of repeating bits.

In block 310, the process 300 performs a block operation on the reducedsize block. For example, a hash calculation may be performed on thereduced size block. This hash calculation may utilize fewer resources(e.g., CPU cycles) and fewer bus operations due to the reduced size ofthe block as there is less data for the hash calculation.

In block 312, it is determined whether the detected pattern is a commonpattern, such as all trailing zeros. If so, no update to the metadatafor the block is required in block 314, as blocks are padded to thepredefined length of the block. Otherwise, if a known or all zeropattern is detected, metadata for the block is updated (e.g., in thehash table 110 of FIG. 1) in block 316. It will be understood that theability to avoid updates of metadata or to update metadata at a lessfrequent interval can save storage space and reduce CPU cycle time.

In block 318, a compression operation is performed on the block. Thecompression operation may utilize fewer resources as compared totraditional compression operations as the block has been reduced in sizethrough the process of FIG. 3.

It will be understood that the advantages described above with respectto block-related operations performed on blocks and the compressionoperations on reduced size blocks can be extended to decompressionoperations as well since less CPU cycles and bus access is required todecompress the compressed blocks.

An example of the compression/decompression bandwidth that may be gainedis described below:

Assuming a 20 GB/s compression engine bandwidth hardware, whenconsidering an average file size of 1 KB, the following capabilitiesresult:

Without a trailing zero removal, the process can compress 4K blocks->20GB/4 KB=5M block/sec;

With trailing zeros removal, the process needs to compress only part ofthe block, each at 1 KB->20 GB/1 KB=20M blocks/sec depending on thecompression bottleneck (bandwidth or processing).

As can be seen, 4 times more blocks/sec can be compressed by simplyremoving the trailing zeros.

A software example is valid also where CPU cycles are reduced incompressing less bytes. The same may apply for hash calculations.

In an embodiment, if the pattern includes a number of bits in the blockthat is less than a predefined value (e.g., <1K), compression may beperformed on a partial page that includes only the bits having thepattern. If the number of bits in the pattern are equal to or exceed thevalue, traditional compression may be performed on the block.

FIG. 5 shows an exemplary computer 500 (e.g., physical or virtual) thatcan perform at least part of the processing described herein. Thecomputer 500 includes a processor 502, a volatile memory 504, anon-volatile memory 506 (e.g., hard disk or flash), an output device 507and a graphical user interface (GUI) 508 (e.g., a mouse, a keyboard, adisplay, for example). The non-volatile memory 506 stores computerinstructions 512, an operating system 516 and data 518. In one example,the computer instructions 512 are executed by the processor 502 out ofvolatile memory 504. In one embodiment, an article 520 comprisesnon-transitory computer-readable instructions.

Processing may be implemented in hardware, software, or a combination ofthe two. Processing may be implemented in computer programs executed onprogrammable computers/machines that each includes a processor, astorage medium or other article of manufacture that is readable by theprocessor (including volatile and non-volatile memory and/or storageelements), at least one input device, and one or more output devices.Program code may be applied to data entered using an input device toperform processing and to generate output information.

The system can perform processing, at least in part, via a computerprogram product, (e.g., in a machine-readable storage device), forexecution by, or to control the operation of, data processing apparatus(e.g., a programmable processor, a computer, or multiple computers).Each such program may be implemented in a high level procedural orobject-oriented programming language to communicate with a computersystem. However, the programs may be implemented in assembly or machinelanguage. The language may be a compiled or an interpreted language andit may be deployed in any form, including as a stand-alone program or asa module, component, subroutine, or other unit suitable for use in acomputing environment. A computer program may be deployed to be executedon one computer or on multiple computers at one site or distributedacross multiple sites and interconnected by a communication network. Acomputer program may be stored on a storage medium or device (e.g.,CD-ROM, hard disk, or magnetic diskette) that is readable by a generalor special purpose programmable computer for configuring and operatingthe computer when the storage medium or device is read by the computer.Processing may also be implemented as a machine-readable storage medium,configured with a computer program, where upon execution, instructionsin the computer program cause the computer to operate.

Processing may be performed by one or more programmable processorsexecuting one or more computer programs to perform the functions of thesystem. All or part of the system may be implemented as, special purposelogic circuitry (e.g., an FPGA (field programmable gate array) and/or anASIC (application-specific integrated circuit)).

Having described exemplary embodiments of the invention, it will nowbecome apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art that otherembodiments incorporating their concepts may also be used. Theembodiments contained herein should not be limited to the disclosedembodiments but rather should be limited only by the spirit and scope ofthe appended claims. All publications and references cited herein areexpressly incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.

Elements of different embodiments described herein may be combined toform other embodiments not specifically set forth above. Variouselements, which are described in the context of a single embodiment, mayalso be provided separately or in any suitable subcombination. Otherembodiments not specifically described herein are also within the scopeof the following claims.

1. A method for managing data block compression in a storage system, themethod comprising: performing, for each block written to the storagesystem: bit-wise traversing the block; searching the block, responsiveto the traversing, for a pattern indicating a repeating sequence ofbits; and upon determining the pattern exists in the block and therepeating sequence of bits in the pattern exceeds a threshold value,removing the repeating sequence of bits from the block thereby yieldinga reduced-size block.
 2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:performing a compression operation on the reduced-size block.
 3. Themethod of claim 2, further comprising: performing a block operation onthe reduced-size block prior to the compression operation.
 4. The methodof claim 3, wherein the block operation is a hash calculation.
 5. Themethod of claim 2, wherein upon determining the pattern exists in theblock and the repeating sequence of bits does not exceed a thresholdvalue, performing the compression operation on the block.
 6. The methodof claim 1, wherein bit-wise traversing the block includes bit-wisetraversing the block from an end of the block having a most recententry.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein: upon determining the patternis not a trailing set of zeros in the block, updating correspondingmetadata for the reduced-size block; and upon determining the pattern isa trailing set of zeros in the block, performing no update tocorresponding metadata for the reduced-size block.
 8. A system formanaging data block compression in a storage system, the systemcomprising: a memory comprising computer-executable instructions; and aprocessor executing the computer-executable instructions, thecomputer-executable instructions when executed by the processor causethe processor to perform operations comprising: performing, for eachblock written to the storage system: bit-wise traversing the block;searching the block, responsive to the traversing, for a patternindicating a repeating sequence of bits; and upon determining thepattern exists in the block and the repeating sequence of bits in thepattern exceeds a threshold value, removing the repeating sequence ofbits from the block thereby yielding a reduced-size block.
 9. The systemof claim 8, wherein the operations further comprise: performing acompression operation on the reduced-size block.
 10. The system of claim9, wherein the operations further comprise performing a block operationon the reduced-size block prior to the compression operation.
 11. Thesystem of claim 10, wherein the block operation is a hash calculation.12. The system of claim 9, wherein upon determining the pattern existsin the block and the repeating sequence of bits does not exceed athreshold value, performing the compression operation on the block. 13.The system of claim 8, wherein bit-wise traversing the block includesbit-wise traversing the block from an end of the block having a mostrecent entry.
 14. The system of claim 8, wherein: upon determining thepattern is not a trailing set of zeros in the block, updatingcorresponding metadata for the reduced-size block; and upon determiningthe pattern is a trailing set of zeros in the block, performing noupdate to corresponding metadata for the reduced-size block.
 15. Acomputer program product for managing data block compression in astorage system, the computer program product embodied on anon-transitory computer readable medium, and the computer programproduct including instructions that, when executed by a computer, causesthe computer to perform operations. The operations include: performing,for each block written to the storage system bit-wise traversing theblock; searching the block, responsive to the traversing, for a patternindicating a repeating sequence of bits; and upon determining thepattern exists in the block and the repeating sequence of bits in thepattern exceeds a threshold value, removing the repeating sequence ofbits from the block thereby yielding a reduced-size block.
 16. Thecomputer program product of claim 15, wherein the operations furthercomprise: performing a compression operation on the reduced-size block.17. The computer program product of claim 16, wherein the operationsfurther comprise performing a block operation on the reduced-size blockprior to the compression operation, the block operation including a hashcalculation.
 18. The computer program product of claim 16, wherein upondetermining the pattern exists in the block and the repeating sequenceof bits does not exceed a threshold value, performing the compressionoperation on the block.
 19. The computer program product of claim 15,wherein bit-wise traversing the block includes bit-wise traversing theblock from an end of the block having a most recent entry.
 20. Thecomputer program product of claim 15, wherein: upon determining thepattern is not a trailing set of zeros in the block, updatingcorresponding metadata for the reduced-size block; and upon determiningthe pattern is a trailing set of zeros in the block, performing noupdate to corresponding metadata for the reduced-size block.